Posted By Carlo on September 14, 2007

I’ve been teaching Katy Nozar how to drive. Katy’s just 15 1/2, so she has her learner’s permit. She can’t wait to get a car. She’s been driving my four-door sedan and her mom’s minivan. She’s pretty good at it, though she’s had some issues with parking (hasn’t hit anybody yet; here’s hoping).

I can’t believe I’m teaching my stepdaughter to drive. Is it that she’s nearly old enough to drive (she’ll turn 16 in February, just in time for icy roads)? Or am I just musing about how time flies? Maybe it’s that summer’s almost over; today was a gorgeous fall day, sunkissed and warm at the end, though it sure did take its time. Which reminds me I never did mention how our family spent the July shaded into August in Stone Harbor, a New Jersey resort town where it was hot and dry and there was beach and Atlantic Ocean and we drove up to Asbury Park and posed outside the Stone Pony and relaxed and watched dumb movies and ate great seafood and shopped for useless, beautiful things and sunned and swam and ate great seafood. I repeat myself. That’s nostalgia for you. Hope we get back to Stone Harbor, a long day’s drive away.

Other topics occupying my mind: the surge and the drawdown. It’s two minutes before Bush starts yet another speech saying how democracy is just around the corner in Iraq, we should be patient, stay the course. Sorry. The guy’s the worst president ever, and while the Republicans deserve their Larry Craigs and Mark Foleys (what do you expect from prigs of such high sanctimony?), Iraq doesn’t deserve what we’ve inflicted on it in the name of liberation. But I digress. Which is my prerogative. I’ll pump more politics into this blog as the stew thickens. In fact, I will now, the day after the speech. Bush is living in a fantasy world, which makes me think I’m living in “The Manchurian Candidate.” Sure hope reality comes to rule the world again someday. Maybe in 2009.

Some thoughts about where I live: The local music is good, especially by the older guys. “Raspberries Live” is a strong double album featuring the reunited originals, and Michael Stanley’s “The Soft Addictions” is a keeper, particularly the great “Lover’s Lane” and “Drinkin’ in the Driveway.”  Raspberries and Stanley are the kind of rockers that are badly out of date. They’re not particularly danceable, they’re kind of old-fashioned, and they emote (particularly Stanley) about real things, like love, the death of love, the death of place, what makes you hopeful when all around is despair. Upbeat? Sometimes, though aspiration is hard to come by, especially in Cleveland. Authentic? For sure. Too bad there’s no market for that anymore. Read the president’s lips.

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